As you've said, the show was filmed, but editing -- and most if not all visual effects -- were done on professional-grade video, which has lower resolution than DVDs are capable of displaying.

As for why the DVDs weren't mastered from the original film source, it would have been very expensive to do. The entire episode would have to be reassembled from film, using the videotaped final version as a guide -- and for any shot containing visual effects, the shot would have to be either taken from the videotape -- with an obvious drop in quality -- or completely recreated -- which at the time would have been very expensive.

Given what's being done with "TOS-R," however, it's possible that TNG might receive similar treatment, although I suspect that its per-episode cost will be much higher.

The effects shots were done on video, so, if they were to use the film as their source, there would be no effects shots. They would have had to redo every single shot using special effects, much like they're doing for the original series.

If CBS is serious about "future-proofing" Trek, they will surely get around to doing TNG. The possibilities for an alternative high definition version, possibly allowing for 16:9 presentation with the extra material in the film stock, are quite exciting.

Tomalak said:
If CBS is serious about "future-proofing" Trek, they will surely get around to doing TNG. The possibilities for an alternative high definition version, possibly allowing for 16:9 presentation with the extra material in the film stock, are quite exciting.

Click to expand...

Ditto that. Finally got an HDTV recently and all of my 4:3 DVD stuff looks terrible on it. This is mainly because my upscaling DVD player can only do 4:3 upscaling in "stretch" mode, but I digress.

Tomalak said:
If CBS is serious about "future-proofing" Trek, they will surely get around to doing TNG. The possibilities for an alternative high definition version, possibly allowing for 16:9 presentation with the extra material in the film stock, are quite exciting.

Click to expand...

Ditto that. Finally got an HDTV recently and all of my 4:3 DVD stuff looks terrible on it. This is mainly because my upscaling DVD player can only do 4:3 upscaling in "stretch" mode, but I digress.

Click to expand...

Yeah, same goes for my dad's Xbox 360. When I played my season 4 and 5 DVD's in it (couldn't find the regular DVD remote and my DVD player's broken so I had to use the 360) it was all stretched.

Tomalak said:
That's because HD is inherently 16:9 - the TOS remastered are pillarboxed in a 16:9 frame.

Click to expand...

Expensive upscaling DVD players will pillarbox 4:3 content automatically while at the same time upscaling it. My little Phillips 5960, which is a stellar player in most other respects, does not have this feature.